


just one second and a million miles

by goblindaughter



Category: Within the Wires (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Stabbing, implied medical torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 11:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8284813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goblindaughter/pseuds/goblindaughter
Summary: This is faith: to lie on the cold metal table, aching, obeying the tape, believing Hester will come through.(Oleta vs. security nurse, one round, no rematch.)





	

This is faith: to lie on the cold metal table, aching, obeying the tape, believing Hester will come through. _Knowing_ Hester has to come through. She will. She will. Her plan almost worked before, it was just the timing. _She will._ Oleta closes her eyes and breathes and tells herself to believe. To trust the voice. It's all she has now.

But as the needle slides into her arm, it is so hard to have faith. It’s so hard to be anything but afraid. They’re going to cut her head open and rearrange her, take her away from herself, and she doesn’t want to be here. She wants to be in that park with that blue-eyed stranger; she wants to be in the coffee shop talking about _A Wizard of Earthsea_ ; she wants to be home, she wants to be safe, she wants to be anywhere else, anywhere at all.

The tape says, _I ask the security nurse to think about forgiveness._

And this is hope.

If Oleta could smile--grimly, joylessly, more baring her teeth than anything--she would. Everything hurts (especially her scar, a throbbing pulsing sun of pain) and she’s already losing feeling in her fingers, but she’s never been good at _can’t_ . Engineering isn’t _can’t_ . Engineering is _working the problem_ . Engineering is _I will either find a way or make one._

Time to make one.

Right hand flat on the table. Push. Swing legs up. She can still use her thighs and she is a runner, her thighs are strong. Fling herself at the security nurse with all the strength in her.

Oleta slams hard against her, knocking her forward into the table. The needle goes flying, the nurse opens her mouth to scream. She slaps the gauze over it and scrabbles for the needle with a hand clumsy and fumbling, fingers too heavy. Her heart thuds hard in her chest and her muscles scream and--she’s not sure she can do this can she do this?

_Remember to breathe._

As the nurse snatches for it, she sinks her teeth into the back of her neck ( _you are not violent_ ; hah, no, but she’s desperate as desperate gets). _Have to get it have to get it have to._ But it’s the nurse’s fingers that close on the syringe. The nurse struggles to twist, slams one elbow into Oleta’s side, just above the scar.

It hurts, of course it hurts, this bright hot thing expanding up her rib cage. Hester was wrong--pain is not relative. Pain is pain. But Oleta has more to lose. She digs her thumb in between the bones of the nurse’s wrist and drives one bare foot into the back of her knee again and again. The nurse’s hand opens. Oleta grabs the syringe, flips it, pulls her arm back.

Slams the syringe home.

“Fuck,” she hisses, “You.” The nurse’s eyes glaze over; she crumples to the ground. The syringe drops from her numb fingers. At the edges of her vision, the world is graying out, everything going fuzzy--but she can still hear the tape.

_Turn around, Oleta. Am I there?_

There’s a roaring in her ears, a pins-and-needles buzzing in her arms and legs; her knees fold under her and she catches herself against the wall, gasping. She can’t pass out yet. She can’t. There’s something important, something _very important--_ she has to listen to the tape--

“Oleta?”

Slow, wobbling, she turns. The door is open. And there she stands--all in white like a lab tech, and Oleta’s instincts scream _dangerdangerdanger_ and all her muscles tense, but the woman’s eyes are blue. And her voice, her voice is right. Oleta knows that mouth, knows the curve of it smiling, those hands, those freckles. She saw them in the park. She saw them at the coffee shop.

But the voice is what she knows best.

The voice is what she trusts.

“Hester,” she gasps, and then she folds. Warm arms catch her and hold her close. “ _Hester_ .” Hester’s saying something ( _hushnowI’vegotyou)_ , but she can’t hear. The last thing she sees before the black takes her is the white lapel of Hester’s coat.

The last thing she thinks is, _It has to work this time._

  



End file.
